Gambler-in-Chief

Obama rolls the dice. We lose.

By

Dan Kennedy

July 16, 2012 - 8:09am

The president’s Ohio bus tour slogan was “Betting on America.”

Imagine if the Romney campaign had shown the poor judgment to snare this slogan. The media would have had a field day with Wall Street’s wagering, turning the economy into a giant casino; with Bain Capital as a cabal of cold-hearted gamblers placing bets they win on either way, while victimized workers lose their jobs to downsizing and outsourcing.

No, the theme of “Betting on America” would not have worked out well for Governor Romney.

Of course, the media also didn’t point out what a very poor gambler Obama has been. He bet a mind-boggling trillion dollars of our money on the Pass Line at the Stimulus Table and sevened out. Not only is there no demonstrable gain from that epic wager, the results include a post-Depression record number of consecutive weeks of unemployment above 8 percent (vs. a forecast 5 percent), the worst unemployment average for a president in the first half of an election year in 30 years, a record number of citizens on food stamps, and so on.

But that’s just one of the President’s losing bets. He placed side bets on green jobs via investments and loan guarantees for solar companies. One after another declared bankruptcy after burning through our money. The latest green energy embarrassment for the president: his buddy at helm of GE has postponed construction of a much heralded, gigantic solar factory in the key swing state of Colorado – one I strongly suspect will never be built. It’s a figment of imagination Obama can talk about as if real until the November election.

The one wager he can point to as a win, bailing out GM and Chrysler, is at best cheating: a circumvention of established law. Obama took already wagered money and assets and re-distributed it among new winners (ie. the union) while he created new losers (ie. shareholders and auto dealership owners). The stock held by the taxpayers is worth far less than we gave for it in place of outright debt, so the president can claim we’ve been repaid. When it comes to “betting,” Obama best find another line of work.

He has pushed a new stack of chips out onto the table. It’s comprised of everybody’s health care and the entire economy wrapped up as Obamacare. This loss could be catastrophic, and the threat of it is the chief reason more than a trillion dollars of idled capital belonging to corporations, small businesses and individual investors is parked, on strike – depriving the nation of the lifeblood needed for recovery from recession.

Virtually every small company owner I know has, for a while, been speaking in terms of Plan A or Plan B, depending on the November election and the fate of Obamacare. Plan B, for the record, is to keep or reduce number of employees below 50, suspend any and all new investments or initiatives, hoard and wait. Most big businesses are shrinking themselves here while investing beyond our borders.

Perhaps you are not much of a gambler. You might not be prone to wager your kids’ college educations or your 401K or your retirement on a spin of the roulette wheel on solar energy or the imposition of choke-hold regulations on businesses, or punitive tax policies, or a federal takeover of the health care industry. On ever larger, ever more expansive, ever more intrusive centralized government. You might not want to wager on European-style socialism or an economy designed to more closely match that of Fidel Castro than Ronald Reagan. You might not make such bets of your own volition. But Riverboat Gambler Obama has, is and will, on your behalf.

If you are extremely suspicious, you might think this Harvard educated, reputedly smartest president ever to be deliberately betting against America rather than on America, actually trying to lose as much as he can as fast as he can. If you are less cynical about him, you must at least agree he has a spectacularly god-awful record as a professional gambler, and think it best to cut off his credit before bankrupts us all.

If you are going to pick a player to back financially in the biggest gambling tournament of all, this clearly isn’t the guy.

The accurate slogan would be: “Betting on America – and Losing Every Bet so Far. But I’m Due!”